7

FIRE SUPPORT BASE JAY: PORTENT OF TERROR

As Mike Conrad was busy cobbling together his resources to carve out FSB Illingworth, his counterpart in the 2/7, Lt. Col. Robert Hannas, was settling into FSB Jay, about six miles away—and even closer to the Cambodian border. Unlike Illingworth, FSB Jay was not a new installation. It had been constructed earlier by an ARVN battalion and then abandoned. Hannas and his men were ordered to reoccupy the former fire base after the discovery, nearby, of new infiltration trails and an NVA ammunition depot. The enemy cache had been quite extensive, containing several tons of artillery and mortar rounds, plus a stash of RPGs, grenades, and machine-gun ammunition. Amazingly, a number of the captured ammo boxes were clearly stenciled USA. What the NVA were going to do with American-manufactured ammunition (which would not fit their standard-issue guns) was unclear unless they were planning on capturing a significant number of American machine guns and field pieces, which, apparently, they were.

Bob Hannas was born and raised in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School and then City College of New York, where he earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in education. Tall, broad-shouldered, and radiating confidence, he ran a tight ship. He was respected by those below and above him. He understood the realities of shepherding a 650-man battalion of grunts that had come from all walks of life and political persuasions—many of them draftees, a number of them harboring antiwar sentiments.

When veteran CBS news correspondent John Laurence and a crew were detailed to the 1st Cav in March 1970, General Casey sent them to Lieutenant Colonel Hannas. The CBS team wanted to film something that was part news and part documentary, a piece concerning what it was like for the “average grunt” in Vietnam during that phase of the war. Casey and the commander of the 1st Brigade, Col. William Ochs, felt that Bob Hannas and his men were the right guys for this delicate assignment. Laurence and his team spent several weeks in and around the men of the 2/7. Their adventures were recorded and shipped back to Saigon and then on to New York and the CBS Evening News back in the States. Laurence wrote a book about his Vietnam experiences, this one and others, entitled The Cat from Hué.1

Hannas, to this day, is not happy with some items that ended up in Laurence’s book. There is a story about Hannas himself, and his wounding at FSB Jay, that was entirely untrue, Hannas says. Another item that irked Hannas, as it did many American commanders, was photojournalists photographing American dead or wounded. The army was sensitive about allowing pictures of casualties to be published at a time when American forces were supposed to be disengaging from combat; and peace talks were well under way (in Paris). There was a practical purpose to the ban as well: It was entirely possible that some family member would be exposed to seeing a dead or seriously wounded relative on the front page of the local paper or on television before the Defense Department could get proper notices to next of kin.

Someone in Laurence’s crew had apparently done some filming that had been banned. One of Hannas’s men, who had witnessed the prohibited photography, told the colonel about it. Since there were no film-developing facilities in the middle of the jungle, the photos needed to be turned in and developed at the CBS Saigon bureau. Colonel Hannas offered the CBS crew a ride on his command Huey to Tay Ninh, where they could hop on another flight to Saigon. During the trip the photographer coyly bragged about having gotten some “great shots.”

“Oh, really?” Colonel Hannas asked. “How many?”

“Enough for these canisters,” the photographer bragged, holding up several film containers.

“Wow, can I see those?” the colonel asked innocently.

“Sure!” the cameraman responded, suspecting nothing.

The photographer passed the metal film cases to Hannas, who promptly pitched them out of the open door of the Huey.

“I got my ass chewed pretty good for that one,” Hannas later chuckled, “but I didn’t give a shit. They broke the rules.”

Hannas didn’t have much better luck with the next film crew, although the final outcome was more amusing.

“They sent [Walter] Cronkite out to me, too,” Hannas related. “He was looking for a juicy story on drugs or race relations. I told him I didn’t have any of those problems, at least not out in the field. He couldn’t quite ‘get it,’ that when you’re in the boonies and depending on the guy standing next to you to protect your ass, you don’t do drugs if you want to survive and you don’t give a crap what color the guy is as long as he’s sober and alert. Cronkite started to argue with me. We were standing near a hot chow line—a dinner that the cooks in the rear had made up and flown in, to give the men a hot meal. Right then, here come these four soldiers, filthy and covered in the black dirt we battled constantly. They were stripped to the waist and walking along with their arms thrown around each other, laughing and having a great ol’ time.

“Suddenly, they see me, ‘the old man.’ They stop, smile, and greet me with, ‘Hey, colonel, how’s it shakin’?’ and other informal greetings. You had to stare at them very hard to realize, under all the grime, that two of these men were white boys and two were blacks.

“I stared at them, with a smile, and said something like, ‘You men are a mess!’ Well, they all looked at each other and started laughing. One of the men then said, ‘Well, colonel, black is beautiful!’

“Cronkite was not amused. He accused me of staging the whole scene.”

*   *   *

Hannas and his battalion took up their positions at FSB Jay on March 18. Just like Illingworth, Jay was in an open plain and had been set astride what the army believed was a major infiltration route for NVA personnel and supplies. However, Jay was going to be closer to the tree line and an even easier target for any NVA gunners who might be in the area. Hannas was not concerned; he believed he was only going to be in this position for three or four days before picking up and relocating his resources again. In fact, both he and Mike Conrad had already picked out the coordinates for their next two jumps across the region. The Americans had also learned from hard experience and good intelligence that the NVA would invariably take at least five days, sometimes more, to study a new fire base and work up a plan of attack. As long as the battalions kept jumping, it would be tough for the NVA to catch up and pounce.

[Author’s note: Part of the reason for this operational caution in NVA regiments was that the units were mostly based on the Russian model of command and control. Only the unit commander himself had any flexibility or initiative, and even that was very limited. Operational orders were typically generated very far up the food chain and then passed down to the field units for execution. This took a great deal of time; plans had to be formulated, information had to be verified, and dispatches needed to be worked up. It was cumbersome and ponderous and allowed for very little leeway. On the other hand, it made it fairly certain that orders would be carried out as issued.]

FSB Jay was smaller than FSB Illingworth, and there were other subtle differences, mostly based on the personal preferences of the commander. For example, where Conrad had dug his TOC into the ground and then covered it with planking, PSP, and sandbags, Hannas preferred having his TOC in a CONEX box, aboveground. He did, however, surround the box with piled-up dirt and sandbags.

As Hannas began reactivating Jay, Conrad flew in to coordinate with him. It was imperative that they confer on their patrol schedules, intended night ambushes, and the placement of their H&I (harassment and interdiction) firing lines. They also wanted to be sure that the other fire bases in the area had them dialed up accurately in regard to covering fire, overlapping fire zones, and mutual support signals. Conrad remembers bantering with Hannas about the “here we go again” nature of their respective positions and the fact that they were being put out there as targets. The two bases, they agreed, would surely draw both the ire and the immediate attention of their foes.

Over the course of the next several days, Hannas, like Conrad, continued to send his companies out on patrols in the immediate area. There were minor skirmishes, but nothing like what the 2/8’s Charlie Company experienced on March 26, which ended up requiring the mad dash and rescue pulled off by the 11th ACR’s Alpha Troop. After the first full week in place, both Hannas and Conrad began to get a little nervous. They had fully expected to have been told to move to the next position, but no orders came down the line to do so.

Colonel Conrad began pleading with his brigade commander, Colonel Ochs, to let him abandon Illingworth and move on. His sense of urgency increased after he learned from Charlie Company that the NVA had detailed diagrams of FSB Illingworth. The sketches included specifics on the position of Conrad’s TOC, the locations of all his artillery pieces, the position of every firing pit, and where all of his ammunition had been stored. Ochs, a veteran infantryman and West Pointer, agreed with Conrad, and they both approached General Casey. Casey took it up with the division commander, Major General Roberts, who, shockingly, demurred. Roberts was satisfied by the action he was getting at and near the locations of these particular fire bases, and he was pleased that the NVA were getting so agitated about them. Roberts felt this was the right approach and the division was getting good results. He ordered his subordinates to keep Jay and Illingworth in place just a while longer.

*   *   *

Conrad had received this startlingly bad news from Roberts directly, at a hastily convened conference in Tay Ninh. Conrad had flown from Illingworth to division headquarters on his command Huey, full of confidence that he would be moving his men out of the trap he perceived Illingworth had become. Along for the ride (but not participating in the high-level meeting) was Capt. John Ahearn, Conrad’s artillery liaison officer. Ahearn had been interested in checking out some new intel on enemy artillery positions, and Conrad said they could do that on the way back.

Ahearn clearly recalls Conrad coming back to the helicopter, after the meeting. Uncharacteristically, Conrad was in a foul mood. He climbed aboard the Huey, slumped down in the jump seat opposite Ahearn, strapped in, and said nothing but a curt “Go!” to the helicopter pilot. His face was dark, and he was obviously distressed. He slammed his fist, hard, into the side of the helicopter’s bulkhead. Ahearn had been at Conrad’s side for nearly three months by this time, and he had never seen Conrad like this. Ahearn decided to keep his own counsel as the helicopter leapt into the sky. It was going to be a bumpy ride, Ahearn concluded, and not because of any potentially bad weather.

*   *   *

In the early morning hours of March 29, eleven days after FSB Jay was reoccupied, the 3rd Battalion of the 95th NVA Regiment opened a bombardment on FSB Jay that nearly crippled the base. The first rounds slammed into and around the TOC. This was, of course, exactly what the NVA had planned. The antennas came down immediately, and all communications between FSB Jay and other American units ceased. Simultaneously, the NVA battalion poured out of the nearby jungle. Before the Americans had much time to react, they were nearly on top of the berm.

Responding to the incoming that was hammering his base, Lieutenant Colonel Hannas was out of the TOC in a flash, trying to assess the damage done and what he needed to do next. Explosives were going off all over the compound.

“I looked up,” Hannas recalled, “and there on the berm, only a few yards away, was an NVA grenadier. He was raising his RPG to fire at the TOC. At the same split second, I raised my rifle. He saw me. For the briefest of seconds, our eyes met. I fired. I hit him squarely in the chest. He must have pressed his trigger simultaneously, but my bullet got to him before the rocket left his tube. The impact of my round must have caused his body to jerk a fraction, but, anyway, his shot was low. Instead of hitting the TOC squarely, the RPG went right into the ground next to me.”

Colonel Hannas remembers seeing his right leg go pinwheeling through the air 6 or 8 feet beyond him. He toppled over.

“I didn’t really feel any pain, I was just pissed,” Hannas said grimly. “A couple of my buddies rushed over and picked me up. One of them yelled something about getting me a medic. I said, ‘To hell with that, put me on that machine gun over there, then go get a medic,’ or something like that. They started to hoist me over to the gun, which was unoccupied, when another mortar round came in and—blam!—just like that, I was down again, minus my other leg.”

Hannas was in deep, serious trouble, and bleeding out quickly.

“Somebody, probably Major Frank, got a medic over to me. Frank and the kid tied off both stumps with tourniquets, somehow. I was going in and out of consciousness. They tell me my heart stopped a couple of times, so they beat on my chest. I remember somebody, once, giving me mouth-to-mouth. I think it was Major Frank. Then someone leaning over me said, ‘Oh, God! The old man’s dead!’ But I wasn’t. I could hear everything they were saying, I could see everything they were trying to do to save me. I wanted to scream ‘I’m not dead!’ but my mouth wouldn’t form the words.”

Leadership of the battalion fell to Maj. Gordon Frank, Hannas’s S-3, who was already slightly wounded himself. The medics picked up Hannas’s body and moved him over to the casualty collection area—on the side where the dead were being placed.

*   *   *

The artillery liaison officer at FSB Illingworth, Capt. John Ahearn, who was awake and alert at the ungodly hour of 0420, began to see flashes of artillery and the glow of flares in the sky in the direction of FSB Jay. He called the FDC at Tay Ninh, who, in turn, activated the prearranged firing plan for Jay, which included the guns at Illingworth as well as the artillery at FSB Camp Hazard. TACAIR was also alerted, and within moments a C-130 flare ship was in the air lighting up the sky. Some minimal communications were restored thanks to a tactical radio that had survived the initial onslaught and to the relatively short sight distance between Jay and Illingworth.

NVA rockets, mortars, and well-placed artillery continued to rain down. These rounds would cause the majority of the damage inflicted on FSB Jay that night. The barrage was accurate and effective because the NVA had had so much time to map out their firing plan and be sure they had every target zeroed in. One mortar round struck the ammo dump for the 105 mm howitzers, which blew up in a horrendous roar. Another round hit a supply of 3,000 pounds of C-3 explosive. It, too, went up in spectacular fashion. Since both stashes of ammo had been dug into well-constructed pits, neither explosion killed anyone, although several were injured.

As the barrage was having its desired effect on Jay, a platoon-sized group of the enemy was able to penetrate the berm in the southwest corner. They blew a hole in the wire and charged in. They knew exactly where they wanted to go: straight at the howitzers. Only a determined effort by the artillerymen, who resorted to firing their M-16s and lowering the guns to fire canister rounds, was able to blunt the attack. As it was, sappers managed to destroy two of the howitzers and disable another.

As dawn began to break, so did the NVA attack. The determined defense put up by Hannas’s men and the arty guys was nearly superhuman. As it got lighter, the attack helicopters, gunships, and TACAIR fighters could find their targets easily. The communications grunts at the battered TOC were finally able to rig some makeshift antennas and got their radios working again. The artillery, with just three guns remaining, kept blasting away at the retreating NVA, their muzzles at zero elevation.

As a full sun bathed FSB Jay in daylight and upward-spiraling temperatures, a thick cloud of dust hovered over everything. The whole scene was macabre and monochrome, except for one small splash of color: Rising above the detritus of this terrible struggle was an American flag, tied to a sapling, flapping leisurely in the rising heat waves.

*   *   *

As the medevacs flew in and out of FSB Jay with their shattered human cargos, one took off in such a fashion that its powerful rotor wash rolled Colonel Hannas’s torso from the pile of dead across the ground and into the pile of wounded. Had that not happened, Bob Hannas might have remained with the dead—permanently.

When the partly comatose colonel was discovered moments later, he felt one man lift him under the arms and heard another, reaching for his feet, shout in horror, “Where the fuck is the rest of this guy?”

A medic jammed a big needle in Hannas’s chest, and the rescuers finally managed to get him aboard a medevac.

*   *   *

Fifteen brave Americans were placed in body bags. Fifty-four grunts were evacuated as wounded, a number of them, like Bob Hannas, in very critical condition. Dust-offs took them to hospital facilities in the rear. Someone finally mentioned that it was Easter Sunday. No one felt like celebrating.

General Casey flew in shortly thereafter. He was greeted by sobering sights. Many men were slowly, as if drugged, trying to set things right, refilling sandbags, dusting off battered equipment, cleaning their weapons. A few others, thoroughly spent, simply sat on the ground or atop empty ammo boxes, their heads in their hands. A couple of men were walking around dazed and zombielike. Many of the remaining men sported bandages.

The grunts had captured a handful of NVA prisoners. Interrogation revealed they were, indeed, part of the 95th NVA Regiment. The POWs also told Casey’s intel men the location of the base in the jungle from whence they had commenced their attack. It was very likely that was where the retreating battalion had gone—except for these men, of course, and seventy-four dead comrades then lying scattered on or about FSB Jay. Casey wanted to gather up all the remaining effectives from the 2/7 and chase down the NVA before they could sneak into Cambodia. He radioed General Roberts and told him of his intentions. Surprisingly, Roberts vetoed the plan. Casey argued with Roberts. Roberts stood firm: He wanted FSB Jay dismantled and moved immediately.

By midafternoon, FSB Jay was history—an abandoned blot on the landscape once more. Anything of value was stripped and moved. All that remained was spent casings, bits of metal, busted crates, blowing bits of paper, a pit with seventy-four enemy bodies, and one small sapling that had once proudly flown an American flag. Four kilometers away a new fire support base was hastily being constructed to replace Jay. Appropriately, it was christened FSB Hannas.